(I’ll just point out briefly that her whitewashing in that movie’s role was, I’d argue the main reason why it was such a box office failure, as was Gods of Egypt and The Wall. Whitewashing means loss of profit, a lesson Hollywood has yet to learn, and the subject for another time.)

So, for a while there, it appeared ScarJo was intent on playing a role that would have denied work for a marginalized community as well as enforced a transphobic trope, that transgender people are merely playing dress up instead of trying to live the gender that they really are.

This is, without a doubt, a victory for the transgender community, because it means that their voices were heard and that change is possible. It’s a bright spark of hope in some rather dark times, to be sure, because lets face it, the representation of transgender people, to say nothing of non-binary and non-gender conforming people, is absolutely atrocious.

I mentioned transgender pain porn earlier, and for that I feel a definition is in order.

Transgender Pain Porn: A movie, TV, online show that features a cisgender actor or actress in a transgender role whereby said transgender role is shown to be one of misery and suffering, usually ending tragically.

One such example? Hillary Swank as Brandon in Boys Don’t Cry, a transgender man who runs away from home, finds a brief moment of happiness, and is murdered by transphobic people.

Dallas Buyer’s Club, starring accused sexual molestor and abuser Jared Leto, is about a man who contracts HIV and, while setting up a buyer’s club to get medication, befriends Rayon, a transgender woman. This is based on the real life story of Ron Woodroof.

Handled by the powers that be in Hollywood, such films are more an attempt at an Oscar grab, as was Jared Leto’s role in The Dallas Buyer’s Club that earned him an Oscar, than any chance to showcase transgender people living and loving and and exploring all aspects of their lives. What’s more, such roles aren’t even offered to transgender actors and actresses, as Trace Lysette, actress on the Amazon series Transparent, pointed out when news of ScarJo’s casting first dropped.

This was followed by up actress Jamie Clayton, best known for her role in the popular Netflix series Sense8, expressing frustration and not even being able to get into the casting room.

So hopefully, with ScarJo opting out, things might be turning around, but there is still some things we can do.

For started, do not do as actress and director Justine Batemann do, and berate the critics and a marginalized community for getting a movie cancelled.

As anyone with access to Google can tell you, simply having an actor or actress with marquee value does not guarantee a successful movie. Any number of well established actors and actresses have starred in abysmal box office failures, such as Bruce Willis in Hudson Hawk, or even ScarJo herself in Ghost in the Shell.

You also shouldn’t then delete your initial tweet and a bunch of other, finger waving, lecturing tweets after being educated on how wrong you are. It makes you look like a coward.

As for actual constructive actions we can take that aren’t paternalistic-ally condescending, the first is that when such moves are made by Hollywood, we, cisgender people, can align our voices with those of Transgender people and call Hollywood out on this bogus casting. They can’t do all the heavy lifting, no single marginalized group should.

Sadly, like a lot of media from the 90s, it does not hold up well to the test of time, especially with its rather narrow application of feminism that, through omission, does not include any other kind of woman who is not white, and so very little who aren’t straight and cisgender.

What I found the most frustrating about the anthology as a whole is that, somehow, there are almost no stories where a woman is single and happy. She almost always has, finds, or has had been in a relationship.

The music for the ending theme came from the No Copyright Music youtube channel, and you can listen to it here.